


In This One It's Just Called Fantasy German

by TheAdelaideParade



Category: Critical Role (Web Series), The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: I'm Bad At Titles, Inspired By Tumblr, Temporary Character Death, other characters appear but aren't featured as heavily
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-01
Updated: 2019-09-01
Packaged: 2020-10-04 21:57:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20478113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheAdelaideParade/pseuds/TheAdelaideParade
Summary: Three unlikely companions meet in a tavern, beat a spider guy, get a town destroyed by a magic fire glove, and join a secret organization on the fake moon. It's familiar...but not too familiar, because their names are Caleb, Jester, and Yasha. They are the Mighty Nein, and there is so much they don't yet know. Strap on your fantasy seatbelts and brace your asses for...THE CRITICAL ZONE.





	In This One It's Just Called Fantasy German

**Author's Note:**

> Greetings and salutations, wanderers! Enter my domain and take a look at my waaaares!
> 
> This all started with kelenia's amazing CR/TAZ art on tumblr: https://kelenia.tumblr.com/post/187349406401/dare-i-say-taz-au . You can also find me on tumblr at https://theadelaide-parade.tumblr.com/ !
> 
> The idea got a hold of me and before I knew it I had 4000 words of how this whole AU would play out. This fic is something like of a summary of the whole arc of the adventure, but if people are interested I might write expanded versions of each arc, with like, actual dialogue and stuff.
> 
> If you haven't listened to The Adventure Zone, be forewarned that this work contains major spoilers for the entirety of the Balance campaign, and also probably won't make a whole lot of sense without at least a passing understanding of the plot of TAZ. 
> 
> Title is a self-promoting reference to my own tumblr post about how if Critical Role were set in the Adventure Zone universe, instead of Caleb speaking Zemnian it would straight up just be called Fantasy German.

It starts in a tavern - or, no, really it starts when Caleb responds to an ad calling for adventurers, because it’s that decision that results in him sitting in this tavern with these people, and he’s already beginning to regret it.

The tiefling woman, who calls herself Jester, has more boundless enthusiasm than Caleb thought possible for a single person. On the other hand, Yasha is even quieter than Caleb himself. There is no reason the three of them should make anything resembling a good team, and yet - 

* * *

No one expected the members of the Institute of Planar Research and Exploration to make friends with each other. It wasn’t necessary for the job, for one thing, but for another it just didn’t seem possible. Mollymauk was too loud, and Yasha was too quiet; Beau too stand-off-ish and Jester too friendly; Caleb and Veth too insular and Captain Fjord too ingratiating. You would be hard-pressed to find a more dissimilar group to send out on a long-term space mission together, but, well…

Watching your entire world be destroyed by black tentacles suddenly bursting from the sky had a way of bringing people together.

* * *

Jester wasn’t so sure about these companions of hers at first, but it turns out they work really well together! Okay, so they got a town kind of sort of blown up. It wasn’t for lack of trying, though! Even though Caleb sort of froze up mysteriously when they first saw the magic fire glove thingy, and even though Yasha barely spoke a word to anyone, and even though Jester kept getting distracted by the weird magic orb she found, she thought they did okay! 

Anyway, that person - Bryce? - who they saved from the weird spider dude sure thought so. They were really quick to recommend them for a job, anyway. And the Director didn’t really hesitate, either. All that stuff about these super dangerous magic items seems pretty crazy to Jester, but hey, now she has a job! With pretty cool people, too. Bryce is really nice, and Mollymauk doesn’t say much but he knows super awesome card tricks. The Director is nice, too, but...when she thinks no one is looking, Jester thinks she seems kind of sad.

* * *

Caleb was the first of their number to die, in cycle 6. It wasn’t exactly a surprise - Caleb had always been a little too breakable for his own good - but that didn’t make it any easier. Jester’s journal pages were often tear-stained that year, Beau grew increasingly snappish, and Veth withdrew almost completely. As the restart drew closer, it felt like the whole ship was holding its breath.

Almost before Caleb had finished appearing on the deck, Veth's hand was pulling out of his as she tackled him in a desperate embrace, Jester not far behind. Fjord, from his place at the wheel, just heaved a sigh of relief. Thank the gods - on top of everything else they had to deal with, at least they could count on death to not be too permanent.

* * *

Yasha still isn’t sure what to make of her team, but she’s growing fond of them despite herself - despite what happened the last time she let herself get fond of someone. Nonetheless, she often finds herself despairing of their capabilities as they try to solve the murder mystery on this train. 

She cannot understate how strange these new friends of hers are. Jester has taken to calling herself “Not the Best Detective Agency,” which not only doesn’t inspire a great deal of confidence, but also doesn’t seem necessary since Jester is just one person, not exactly an agency. Yasha can usually count on Caleb to commiserate with her about Jester’s weirder moments - she’s still not totally convinced this “Traveler” is a real god, much less that proper worship requires painting dicks on every imaginable surface - but he’s been distracted by, of all things, a little halfling boy traveling alone. Certainly, Luc had given them some assistance, but Caleb couldn’t seem to deny the boy anything, and seemed as confused as anyone by this turn of events.

Still, they manage - with, okay, a LOT of help from Luc - to figure out the mystery, and return another Relic to the Director. And if Yasha feels a twinge of sorrow as Mollymauk wordlessly brings them their payment, beaming, for reasons she can’t begin to guess...well, she never claimed to be any less strange than her friends.

* * *

When Fjord appeared at Beau’s door one night, dripping with seawater - despite the fact that the current cycle was on a planet with no oceans to speak of - even the unflappable first mate was distinctly perturbed. When he described the strange dream he had - of looming eyes, booming voices, promises and threats - she channeled her disquiet into waking the rest of the crew for an immediate debrief.

Through some experimentation, they quickly discovered that both Fjord and Uk’otoa - as the entity apparently introduced itself - could initiate these conferences. They also discovered, to their horror, that Uk’otoa’s threats in Fjord’s dreams weren’t empty. Even though he came back in the new cycle, Jester was never quite the same after she found Fjord’s body in his bed, drowned overnight in his sleep.

* * *

Luc’s appearance as a new member of the Bureau of Balance doesn’t particularly surprise Caleb, but he gives a stern look at the Director when she makes the announcement, regardless. A boy that young has no business being employed by a shady organization, no matter how noble its purpose. After all, look what happened with...well. No need to bring up the past.

The Director, for her part, rolls her eyes in response. Caleb is not surprised by her informality. He thinks perhaps he should be, the Director is overall a very solemn woman, but something about her always seems to brighten when the Mighty Nein are around. (Look, he knows there are only three of them, it was never meant to be a serious suggestion.) Not just Jester, whose presence lights up any room she’s in, but Yasha too, and even Caleb.

Something about her gets heavier around them, too, like there is a weight on her shoulders. He knows better than to bring up either of those things to her, though. 

He also knows better than to complain in front of Jester, who will tease him for weeks, even when their new mission gets them wrapped up in, of all things, a battle wagon race.

* * *

There was a year, amidst all of the frantic searching for the Light, the desperate flights from the Hunger, where things were...good, almost. The planet they ended up on was mostly beaches, and they found the Light barely a week into the year. Suddenly, they found themselves with time to just...relax.

Veth mostly stayed on the ship doing alchemical experiments - for fun, though, not for any mission-related purpose - and Caleb alternated between keeping her company and lounging on the beach, working his way through a backlog of unread novels. Beau spent much of her time meditating, taking advantage of the sounds of the sea to hone her craft, but took frequent breaks to assist Jester with various pranks. Molly and Yasha sought out what few flowers they could discover and wove them into extravagant crowns and necklaces. Fjord stuck to his duties at first, unwilling to shed his persona as the responsible Captain, but eventually let loose and invented a new ocean sport. That year, the eruption of dark tentacles from the sky was even more disheartening than usual.

* * *

No matter what Caleb says, Jester thinks that the mission in Goldcliff went pretty well. They got the Gaia Sash and didn’t destroy even a little bit of the town in the process! Okay, yeah, there was that weird thing at the end with the lady in the red robe who started yelling at them about being afraid and hungry and then blew up or something, but Jester definitely isn’t worried.

That isn’t the right reaction, apparently, because when they tell the Director about the Red Robe she freaks the fuck out and says that if they see the lady again they have to run right away. She’s also super bummed about the Captain, who it turns out was a friend of hers, and who she really didn’t expect to fall under the Gaia Sash’s thrall. But it works out okay for the Mighty Nein, because they get to be the only Reclaimers now, since everybody else keeps getting thralled. Just another reason why the Mighty Nein are the coolest!

Jester also isn’t worried about how her magic orb kind of seems to have a mind of its own. No, definitely, definitely not worried.

* * *

On cycle 100, they landed on a plane that was a lot like their home. Or, at least, like the plane they started in; they’d all spent more time on the Balleater than they ever did in the place they were born, and the ship and its crew had started to feel more like home than anywhere else.

Anyway, this world was a lot like theirs. It had elves and dwarves and humans and orcs, and magic a lot like theirs, and weather a lot like theirs. And they had a plan, they’d been working on it for a while, and they found the Light fairly quickly. So, they decided that this was as good a place as any to try to put down roots. 

* * *

Of all their missions so far, this one might be Yasha’s least favorite. She doesn’t like the suits they have to wear to avoid the transmutation magic, and she doesn’t like the creepy singing crystals they keep running into, and she doesn’t like the pacifying tones of the servant of death who wants to arrest them for necromancy crimes. (He somehow manages to sound agreeable while listing their impossibly high death counts - if Yasha had died eight times, she’s pretty sure she would remember - and that is a mismatch of intention and demeanor that Yasha doesn’t trust one bit.)

Yasha also doesn’t like how easy it is to win this time. Yeza’s only punishment for messing with the laws of life and death (_what _ was he thinking, the man is an alchemist) is having to send back the souls he summoned? All it takes to wipe clean the Mighty Nein’s slate is a game of chance? Death isn’t that easily pacified, Yasha knows very well. It isn’t fair that things should be so easy this time, when they never were before.

Still. If Caduceus can take her message to Zuala, wherever she is...maybe it wasn’t so bad, in the end.

* * *

They broke the Light into seven pieces. They hoped that in smaller chunks, whatever drew Uk’otoa to the Light - its craveability, as Jester dubbed it - might be diluted enough that Uk’otoa wouldn’t be able to find them. Each of them made a powerful artifact from one of the pieces. 

(Yasha, with her troubled past, made the Temporal Chalice. Fjord, lover of the wild seas, crafted the Gaia Sash. Veth, alchemist extraordinaire, created the Philosopher’s Stone. Caleb’s talent with fire flowed through the Phoenix Fire Gauntlet. Jester made the Oculus to bring her wildest imaginings to life. Molly’s history with resurrection might or might not have influenced the Animus Bell. And Beau made a staff that even she, completely lacking in magical skill, could use to shield her friends from harm.)

And then they released the Relics into the world and hoped for the best.

* * *

Even while Caduceus was making his outrageous claims, Caleb was certain that he has not died dozens of times; his memory is perfect, he would remember that kind of thing. After the events in Refuge, he is even more certain, because dying is _ awful _. He doesn’t think he could forget it if he had died before that terrible time loop.

That isn’t what has him hiding in his room like a coward, though. He’s overcome by the memories the Chalice had shown him, of his own terrible mistakes. The Academy, his time with Trent, his fall from grace - and that last memory, or rather, the earliest, that somehow gives him the most pause. He remembers flames, the screams of the dying. He remembers that he is to blame for their deaths, just as the Chalice showed him, but…

He doesn’t remember _ why _.

This mystery wars for his attention with the guilt of turning down his chance to make everything right. He takes some small comfort in the fact that the dangerous artifact is destroyed now, and that Yasha and Jester made the same choice, but he doubts that they have made any mistakes so great as his. Even with these sudden holes in his memory, he has no difficulty believing that he burned those people - whoever they were - to their deaths at some point during his sordid history. But why doesn’t he _ remember _?

Eventually, he’s torn from his melancholy by Luc knocking at his door. Of course, he remembers, it’s magic day; he’s agreed to teach the boy some of what he knows, and he’s glad to do so. They are meant to move on to _ mage hand _ , today, since Luc has picked up on _ message _ so quickly. He’ll just have to try and put this puzzle out of his mind for the time being.

* * *

As the months passed, and Uk’otoa never arrived, it became clear that the plan had worked. The problem with this world being so like their home plane, though, was that the people had the same corruption inside of them. The Relics’ craveability was too much to ignore, and in short order wars broke out. Each of Relics caused tremendous damage, and each member of the IPRE felt the guilt of creating them. 

Caleb tried to stop a conflict over the Gauntlet, once, and made things much, much worse. None of them felt like trying to interfere after that.

Eventually, Beau proposed a new plan: if she put up a shield around this plane, using her Staff, Uk’otoa wouldn’t be able to get to them, even if they were eventually discovered. The Light would be safe forever. Molly argued against this plan immediately. The plane wouldn’t survive without its bonds, it would fall apart. Besides that, it wouldn’t do any good to the planes that Uk’otoa had already consumed. They needed to find a better solution.

They put it to a vote. It was unanimous against Beau’s plan. She admitted defeat, and put it aside. They could only watch as their Relics continued to destroy the world.

* * *

Jester is not freaking out. She isn’t. Jester is a-okay all the time, no problem, no worries. It’s just that...when she went to go visit the Voidfish - you know, like you do - it’s just. Her magic orb kind of seemed to...react to it? Like it wanted to say something, almost. And if that wasn’t weird enough, she figured out what the Voidfish’s song means. The Voidfish has a baby.

And, okay, if the Voidfish has a baby that means the Director has been keeping secrets. Like, way more secrets than even a Director of a super-secret organization should have. And from the Mighty Nein, of all people! Call Jester crazy, but she feels like she has a bond with the Director, and she thinks the Director feels it too. Like they should be best friends, not just boss and employee. 

But none of Jester’s friends would keep secrets like this from her, she doesn’t think. Even though Yasha didn’t tell her about Zuala for ages, and even though Caleb still won’t tell her what the Chalice offered him...Okay. Maybe her friends _ would _ keep secrets like this from her. Still. Something is fishy. (Pun _ totally _ intended.)

* * *

It wasn’t all bad. Veth met a wonderful man named Yeza, and after a brief but passionate courtship they were married, and perfectly happy. 

Except.

Except that the world was falling down around them, and Veth had never been one to sit idle while things went wrong, and so she went out into the world over and over again to try and minimize the damage their creations were causing. And one day, she didn’t return.

Caleb came out of his depression just enough to help Yeza search tirelessly for Veth. They found no trace of her. 

* * *

Yasha takes back everything she said about the Crystal Kingdom debacle. Wonderland is, without question, the _ worst _. Yasha herself has lost vitality, aged a decade in moments, and lost some future moment of glory, but it still feels like she has suffered the least.

What she hates is having to help Caleb struggle forward with so little health left. (He took a penalty rather than lose any memories, and another to try and avoid losing what little vitality he has; Yasha took that penalty for him, but that didn’t stop him from rolling body again. After such a loss, the first of his two successive skull rolls nearly killed him in a single hit.)

What she _ hates _ is watching Jester try to keep up a positive attitude after losing the only memory she had left of her mother, and most of her vision. (Jester lost her darkvision in the first round; in the third round she rolled brain again and couldn’t give up her memory of meeting the Traveler. Yasha wanted to take her penalty too, but Jester wouldn’t let her roll three times in the third round; when Jester rolled eye again and lost her left eye completely, the horrible demon twins just laughed and declared it _ bad luck _. Yasha hates them most of all.)

* * *

It happened on a day like any other. Caleb and Yeza were planning their next avenue of investigation for Veth; Fjord was chatting with Jester and Molly at the helm; Yasha was looking for Beau to ask for a spar. 

It hit them all at once; they began to forget what they were talking about, who they were talking _ to _. Caleb found himself losing Veth’s name in the middle of a sentence about her. Molly found himself losing words all together, too invested in his friends and the mission to remember anything at all without them. Yasha found herself staring at Beau as the first mate fed the last few pages of Jester’s journal to the voidfish, and Beau caught her as she fell.

* * *

Caleb doesn’t know what to make of any of this. He doesn’t know what he was expecting when he cast true seeing on himself, but it certainly wasn’t to catch sight of the mysterious robed woman from Goldcliff. Even less expected was communicating with her in thieves’ cant - he doesn’t remember ever learning thieves’ cant, all of these gaps in his memory are getting more worrying - and deciding, despite himself, to trust her. It feels right.

He nearly dies (again) when the succubus expels him from his own body using his second skull roll. Jester pulls some kind of miracle through the Traveler to get him into a temporary mannequin body, but not before his original body is destroyed, and not before he has some kind of vision of a world with two suns that feels like...home. And then that robed woman is there again, asking them to trust her, and he wants to, and Jester does too, because apparently the Director has been hiding things, and with that it takes only a little convincing for Yasha to go along with it all.

As they destroy their stones of farspeech to the sound of Luc’s desperate questions, he can only hope they aren’t making a terrible mistake.

* * *

Beau placed them carefully. Mollymauk, poor Molly, she had to keep at her side. He was as friendly as ever, but he just wasn’t the same as before. Losing his memories did something to him; he wouldn’t make it alone. He’d have to stay with her.

Fjord, she was dismayed to discover, had vanished. Gone without a trace, just like Veth, and now there were two of their party Beau either had to search for, using precious resources, or give up on, and live with the guilt.

* * *

If Jester stops to think about anything that’s happening right now, she might just lose her mind, so she isn’t going to. She won’t think about how the Red Robe turned out to be Nott the Brave, who they met in Phandalin before it was destroyed. She won’t think about how the Director has been hiding another Voidfish, and how they have to find it without her catching them if they want to get back the memories they are, apparently, missing. She really won’t think about how that means breaking into the Director’s office.

She finds herself instead thinking about her weird magic orb. Something has kept her from thinking about it too much, too deeply, but she thinks maybe she should have tried harder. It’s starting to feel important. 

* * *

The remaining three weren’t so tragic, not at first. Yasha, Beau found a community for, where her strength would be valued. She was overjoyed when she learned that Yasha had found a wife. She was devastated to discover that her friend’s love had been lost.

Jester ended up in a bustling city, residing in the care of a kindly performer. She thrived, for a time, finding new mischief constantly, and Beau delighted to check in on her. But one day, when Beau took a look, she found Jester confined to her home. Her mischief got out of hand, she went after the wrong person, and now she was in danger if she went outside. Beau maybe should have found a slightly less exciting home for Jester.

Caleb, she placed in a farming town that reminded her of the stories he told her of his birthplace. She expected him to thrive, and he did, for a while. Then he got entangled in some kind of wizard cult, and she didn’t notice until he’d gotten caught up in a mass murder. She could never find the evidence that Ikithon was the one really behind it, but Caleb certainly seemed convinced it was his own fault. New nightmares joined the flashbacks of events he couldn’t even remember, and Caleb’s life on the run got worse and worse, and Beau...couldn’t fix it. There wasn’t anything she could do but finish the mission as quickly as she could.

* * *

By some means that are beyond Yasha’s ability to fathom, Luc has gotten involved in this harebrained scheme, because he figured out that the Mighty Nein were up to something. Now she and Jester (with Nott secretly in tow) are breaking into their boss’s office on the intel of a mysterious lich woman who Caleb said they should trust, while Caleb and the kid are going to get him a new body that Luc thinks Pumat Sol might have for some reason.

It’s all a little beyond Yasha. But she wants to know the truth behind all of this, and if it takes breaking into a few offices to do it, she will. She’s very good at breaking things.

* * *

(Fjord is desperate. He’s been trapped in this gods-damned ball since Uk’otoa put him into it years ago, when he thought he died but didn’t, and he’s tried everything he can think of to get Jester to notice his presence. Nothing has been enough, and he’s terrified that his crew, his friends, his _ family_, are about to go up against Uk’otoa without him, and there’s nothing he can do about it.)

(Veth didn’t mean to be gone for so long, she really didn’t. She barely meant to leave at all - she and Yeza had just gotten married, and life was finally really _ good _ for her. It was just - her Relic kept leaving a trail of destruction, and Caleb was so distraught about what had happened with the Gauntlet, and she just couldn’t stand it anymore. She had to do something.

She didn’t know that she’d run into that goblin tribe and get captured. She’d never have guessed that that witch would curse her and make her a lich, and make it impossible for her to get back to Yeza.

She definitely wouldn’t have risked it if she’d known she was pregnant.)

(Empty, empty, empty, empty - )

Caleb and Luc are racing through the halls after Caleb fended off those shadow creatures, knowing that something is happening, and whatever it is, the Director probably knows what it is. They burst into the office just in time to see Jester and Yasha down the Voidfish ichor, and the Director doesn’t arrive in time to keep Caleb and Luc from doing the same.

Memories flash through Caleb’s mind almost too fast for him to process. The Gauntlet - _ his _ Gauntlet - and the voyage, and Uk’otoa - the Director is watching in horror...no, Beauregard, _ Beau_, why would she - ? And then he can’t think about any of that because he’s thinking about _ Veth, oh gods, how could he forget about Veth? _

Jester is so busy dealing with all these new memories - Beau, Veth, Fjord, where’s Fjord? - that she barely notices her magic orb thud to the ground and begin to roll away. It rolls all the way over to Luc, and when he picks it up, it suddenly glows bright as a star.

_ I didn’t do that! _ Luc yells.

_ I know_, Jester says, and she does, and she shatters the ball on the ground, and it bursts with light, and _ oh, there’s Fjord _.

Through a blur of memories, Yasha watches her captain appear in an explosion of yellow. Then she watches Veth, released suddenly from the bag of holding, whirl towards Beau but freeze when she catches sight of Luc.

_ ...Luc? _ It’s barely more than a whisper.

Luc squints, then his eyes widen and get very watery very quickly. _ Mama? _

And then they’re holding each other and everyone else is wrapped up in that apparent reunion but Yasha only has eyes for Molly - Molly, Molly, _ Molly _ \- wiping his mouth of the Voidfish ichor he drank during all the commotion. His eyes meet hers briefly, clear for the first time in years, and he winks before turning to the Director.

_ What the actual fuck, Beau? _

Beau doesn’t know how it all fell apart so quickly. All of her plans, all of the sacrifices she’s made - she knows the rest of the group didn’t approve of her idea, but they were never good at seeing the big picture, that was _ her _ job - up in smoke. Uk’otoa is here, even though they split up the Light, and there’s no time, they either have to block this world off or run.

Beau wants to use her plan, of course. Fjord is all for running, and Caleb and Molly are quickly falling to his camp. Veth and Yasha don’t want to run, they have family and memories on this world, but they don’t think Beau’s plan will work either. It’s all starting to devolve into a screaming match when Jester softly says - 

_ What if there’s a third option? _

From there, everything happens very quickly. Fjord steers the ship, masterful at the wheel as he’s ever been, while Veth and Molly head to the surface to fight off the incursion there. Beau is preparing the shield - with the bit of magic she’s picked up over the years, because she had to learn this spell herself after she wiped the memory of every mage in her party. And the Mighty Nein (gods it’s a stupid name, even now that they’re applying it to all of them there’s still only seven of them, it’s exactly what she would have expected,) is going to fight. And...they’re going to win.

And they do.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Did you agree with how I distributed the TAZ roles among the CR characters? Did I miss a plot or character element you thought was super obvious or important? Are you just mad that Pumat Sol is not a sufficient replacement for Garfield? (Me too, reader. Me too.) Let me know in the comments, and drop a kudos if you enjoyed!


End file.
